Iran and Reality: A Flickering Light on the Edge of Disaster

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This is an extremely important article at a very dangerous moment in our nation's history. In a political scene that was even slightly sane, this piece would be dominating the national discourse. It should be printed in the New York Times and Washington Post, it should be the topic of every political yap show on television, people should be talking about it between downs and during commercials while they watch the NFL playoffs.

This article speaks truth â€“ the stone-hard truth â€“ to power. Or as Dylan said, "Every one of those words rang true, and glowed like burning coal." Here we have a prominent, American-based Iranian dissident peeling away the pernicious myths and lies that encrust the American understanding of the situation in Iran. This deliberately manufactured crud is so thick that it is almost impossible to have any kind of genuine debate about what is happening before our eyes: the slow, methodical, step-by-step, relentless, implacable march of the Bush Administration toward war with Iran. They want that war, they are planning for that war â€“ and they will have that war, sooner rather than later, if they are not stopped somehow.

The very best outcome of a war with Iran â€“ the most benign result
possible to imagine â€“ will be deaths of hundreds of thousands of
innocent people and a floodtide of terror and carnage set loose on a
world in overwhelming economic crisis. That is the best possible
outcome. The worst is the slaughter of tens of millions of innocent people from the nuclear attacks that we know George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have advocated in
their maniacal war planning: tens of millions dead, hundreds of
millions poisoned, whole nations brought to ruin and a planet mortally
sickened. Between these two poles of ungodly mass slaughter and
unfathomable genocide lie the only possible realistic outcome of a war
with Iran. And we stand on the very brink.

We stand there because cunning thugs are exploiting the carefully
cultivated ignorance of not only the general American people but also
of almost all of the American Establishment as well â€“ the "great and
the good," the "best and the brightest," the technocrats and thinkers,
the media and government, the tycoons and the corporate chiefs. Most of
these "leaders of society" are as ignorant about the reality of Iran as
any high school dropout stacking boxes at Wal-Mart. And so the terms of
any discussion ("debate" is too strong a word to describe the bellicose
bipartisan "consensus" against Iran) about the Bush Faction's
accelerating rush to a new war is already completely divorced from
reality. It's like trying to decide which cartoon character would be
the best one to keep your house from burning down â€“ while you stood
there on your real-live lawn and watched your real-live house burn
down. It's meaningless, it's stupid, it's destructive. And that's all
we're getting out of Washington, that's all we're getting from the
media.

But in his article in The Progressive, Professor Muhammad Sahimi offers
a beacon of clarity, with straightforward prose, based on hard facts
and experience. It is this perspective that should now be ascendant in
the halls of Congress and ringing through the airwave â€“ but it is
nowhere to be found.

We've discussed here many times the various reasons why the Bush
Faction wants war with Iran, and the political, financial and
ideological aggrandizement they think they will gain from it. But as
they push us closer and closer to this fateful conflict, it becomes
less important why they want it; the obvious fact that they do want it,
that they have been maddened by whatever inner worms of the spirit to
pursue this lunatic course no matter what the cost â€“ this is what is
most important now. Whatever its origin, their mad ambition must be
thwarted. To do this, we must know the truth and deal with reality.
Professor Sahimi provides us with both.

Excerpts from the article:
Back in March, the Bush Administration released its new â€œNational
Security Strategy of the United States,â€ and regime change in Iran
leaps out of it as a goal. â€œWe may face no greater challenge from a
single country than from Iran,â€ the document baldly states in a grand
exaggeration. And for all the recent talk about Iranâ€™s nuclear threat,
the document does not confine its discussion of Iran to the nuclear
issue. â€œThe United States has broader concerns,â€ it says. â€œThe Iranian
regime sponsors terrorism, threatens Israel, seeks to thwart Middle
East peace, disrupts democracy in Iraq, and denies the aspirations of
its people for freedom.â€

All of these issues, along with the nuclear one, â€œcan ultimately be
resolved only if the Iranian regime makes the strategic decision to
change these policies, open up its political system, and afford freedom
to its people,â€ the document states. â€œThis is the ultimate goal of U.S.
policy.â€ President Bush and Condoleezza Rice may stress in public that
they are giving diplomacy a try, but this document makes clear that
they have something else in mind.

If the Bush Administration attacks Iran, it would be violating the U.N.
Charter. And it would also be violating the Algiers Accord that the
United States signed with Iran in 1981 to end the hostage crisis. Point
I, paragraph 1, of that accord states, â€œThe United States pledges that
it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to
intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iranâ€™s
internal affairs.â€

Not only is the goal of regime change illegal, it is also unachievable.

â€œDemocracy cannot be imported, nor can it be given to a people by
invading their nation, nor by bombing them with cluster bombs. It must
be indigenous,â€ says Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights advocate
who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

...Iran is not Iraq. Iraq was formed only in 1932 with
artificial boundaries that have no historical roots. Iran, on the other
hand, has existed for thousands of years as an independent nation.
Hence, Iranian nationalism is extremely fierce. Military strikes on
Iran would create a potent mixture that combines fierce Iranian
nationalism with the Shiitesâ€™ long tradition of martyrdom in defense of
their homeland and religion. The attacks would engulf the entire region
in flames.

â€œIranians will not allow a single U.S. soldier
to set foot in Iran,â€ declares Ebadi, and this is a woman who has been
imprisoned by Iranâ€™s hardliners and is constantly harassed for her work
on behalf of political prisonersâ€¦

Although a large majority of Iranians despise the hardliners, anyone
who has the slightest familiarity with Iranâ€™s history knows that
intense bombing of Iran will not lead to their downfall. Rather, it
will help them consolidate power.

â€œThe conservatives need an external enemy in order to preserve their
power,â€ says Mohammad Reza Khatami, a leading reformist and younger
brother of the former president. By creating an unnecessary crisis over
Iranâ€™s nuclear program, the Administration has played right into the
hands of Iranâ€™s hardlinersâ€¦

During Iranâ€™s presidential elections of 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ran
on a platform of â€œbringing the oil wealth to peopleâ€™s homes,â€ promising
a robust economy, elimination of corruption, and ample employment
opportunities for Iranâ€™s young and educated people. It has now become
clear that Ahmadinejad could not deliver on those promises. Knowing
this, he has used the U.S.-created nuclear crisis not only for inciting
Iranian nationalism, but also for distracting peopleâ€™s attention from
Iranâ€™s vast economic, social, and political problems, as well as
attempting to suppress Iranâ€™s democratic movement.

â€œThe best the U.S. government can do for democracy in Iran is to leave
us alone,â€ Akbar Gangi, an Iranian investigative journalist who spent
six years in prison for reporting on the murder of dissidents by Iranâ€™s
intelligence agents, said on a recent trip to the United States.

Iran has a wide spectrum of reformist and democratic groups that are
all against U.S. intervention in Iranâ€™s internal affairs and its goal
of regime change. They favor political evolution and have made it clear
that, for many reasons, they will not work with the United States. Many
wonder aloud why the U.S. did nothing when the reformist Khatami was
elected in 1997. Washington could have lifted its economic sanctions
against Iran that hurt only ordinary Iranians, but it did not. After
Khatamiâ€™s government helped the U.S. defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan,
President Bush responded by listing Iran as a charter member of the
â€œaxis of evil.â€

â€¦ With his deplorable statements regarding Israel and the Holocaust,
President Ahmadinejad has not helped the situation any. But within
Iranâ€™s political power structure, important decisions regarding its
foreign policy and national security are not made by its president.
Iranâ€™s official policy is to recognize the two-state solution for the
Israel-Palestinian conflict, if the Palestinians also accept it.

Much has been made of Iran enriching a minuscule amount of uranium at
4.8 percent that is far from serviceable in the making of nuclear
weapons. By contrast, Brazil enriched uranium to a 20 percent level and
limited IAEAâ€™s visits to its enrichment facilities. South Korea,
Taiwan, and Egypt have all been caught by the IAEA trying to secretly
enrich uranium or design a nuclear bomb or engage in experiments
without declaring them to the IAEA. But where is the U.S. outrage at
such violations? And Israel, of course, already has about 200 nuclear
weapons, and Pakistan, Iranâ€™s neighbor to the east, is also armed with
nuclear weapons. Such hypocrisy has angered Iranian reformists and
human rights advocates.